Manchester: Plus ca change

I love Manchester. And I can say that with at least some authority as I lived there for nine glorious months in the late 1980s at the height of the infamous “Madchester” era.

At that point, it was impossible to go into a shop or pub without being deafened by the latest anthem from the Stone Roses or Happy Mondays. Or without tripping over baggy jeans and tie-dye tops, particularly in that indie shopping mecca, Afflecks Palace, located in the now bohemian, but formerly scruffy, so-called Northern Quarter.

And it’s still there in all its glory, thankfully. All vinyl record stalls and alternative clothes stores, piercing and tattoo parlours strung out over the three scuffed floors that betray its department store heritage – although presumably the esteemed owners of the old Affleck & Brown wouldn’t really recognise it these days. Or get the perverse hipster charm of novelties such as the Black Milk Cereal Café bursting with sugar-laden breakfast treats.

Anyway, to get back to the point, most of my Manc friends in the late 1980s were gay. Which meant that the majority of my going-out-of-an-evening exploits were focused on the Canal Street area of town – although in those days, it was all about dark and dingy pubs around Princess and Sackville Street near China Town

Which, it must be said, stands in stark contrast to the bright and airy chic of today’s Gay Village canal-side bars – something that’s probably really quite symbolic of the change in public attitudes to all things homosexual, and not just in Manchester.

But whatever the truth of it and despite my focus elsewhere, I’m pleased to say that I still managed to make it to that most iconic of nightclub/music venues, the Hacienda, which was just down the road. And I really loved the urban warehouse style of the place too, with its exposed brickwork and police-no-entry barrier tape plastered everywhere – it may all be a bit clichéd now, but it was definitely new and exciting then.

But how Manchester has changed, and not just a bit, each time I’ve been back. I know it’s all been said before but every time I visit, I’m truly amazed by the continuing transformation.

Because it’s been a city in transition for the last 20 years – since 1996, in fact, when the IRA set off the UK’s largest peace-time bomb in a van in the city centre’s Corporation Street, injuring 212 people and causing £411 million-worth of damage in the process.

Regeneration

But despite the tragedy, Manchester has never looked back. When the regeneration money came pouring in from the private sector and Europe, it grabbed the chance to reinvent itself, almost beyond recognition.

And interestingly, culture and the arts have played a central role – the pocket-sized Victorian-style Cornerhouse cinema and visual arts centre on Oxford Road has, for one, just transmuted into a huge £25 million futuristic exhibition, theatre and film complex called Home.

Also waiting in the wings is the Factory, described by Chancellor George Osborne in his autumn statement, as a “large-scale, ultra-flexible arts space”, to the creation of which he dedicated a healthy £78 million.

So the theme, it seems, is very much one of renewal. While some places like Albert Square with its Victorian Gothic grandeur and the Pantheon-inspired Central Library haven’t changed a bit, other downtown areas have morphed considerably.

Today Manchester is rather more about steel-and-glass skyscrapers, outdoor cafes and shiny new trams than grubby, red-brick edifices, dank, dingy towpaths and greasy spoons – although, to be fair, lots of the old classics are still there where I left them. You just have to strain a bit harder to see them.

But despite the metamorphosis, Manchester still feels the same at heart. The imposing warehouses may have turned into trendy city centre flats and the smoky pubs into fashionable bars, but the people with their wry humour and down-to-earth manner are still as friendly as ever.

Northern Powerhouse

But it does make you wonder somewhat just what impact the much-feted Northern Powerhouse notion will have on the place.

But in reality, it seems to be more about supporting the town and its environs to become the UK’s second city behind London. Or at least the capital of the north – much to the disgruntlement of the town’s notoriously independent and very distinct northern neighbours – wealthy Yorkshire, in particular. And Birmingham, of course, which currently claims the number two slot for itself.

Anyway, a key element of the landmark £1 billion devolution settlement for Manchester involved greater powers over house-building, planning, skills development and health in return for electing a local mayor by spring 2017 – with hints that other northern areas might be allowed to follow suit if they behaved themselves and found themselves a mayor too.

Just as important was the implementation of a so-called Northern Transport Strategy in order to boost economic development across the wider region after years of underinvestment. But the Strategy, which was intended to slash journey times between major northern cities by means of a high-speed rail infrastructure, has now been delayed indefinitely.

Which makes it’s all a bit unclear what’s going to happen next really. Certainly people locally seem to have little belief that things will change much, taking a “who-knows’ and “we’ve-heard-it-all-before” stance.

For instance, at 80, it has the lowest female life expectancy in England and Wales, more than six years behind the front-runners. The city’s child protection activities were deemed inadequate by schools watchdog Ofsted lately, while deprived areas such as the infamous but regenerating Moss Side, where I lived for a while, still suffers child poverty rates of 59%.

So it seems that the city does still need some support, just in other ways too. Because as far as I can see, it’ll take more than promises of devolution and a bit of fancy building work to really solve its post-industrial problems.